If you enjoy listening to informative audio stories, our podcasts are for you. You can play or download these stories directly from the listings below, or on Anchor.fm and the following popular streaming services:
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The Wizard of Old Wheels
As today’s motorcycles become more high-tech, the simplicity of a vintage bike becomes more appealing. Among the simplest are Japanese models...
Occupy Your Bathroom
One man’s quiet fight to save your face, your bank account, and the environment from an endless case of shaving rash....
Is Digital Craftsmanship an Oxymoron?
On a funky old pier along San Francisco’s waterfront, Autodesk, a world leader in digital tools for makers, runs a futuristic prototype shop that...
Real Film Strikes Back
Against all odds, and despite the best efforts of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, old-fashioned, analog, motion-picture film is suddenly making a...
The Celluloid Gumshoe
Eddie Muller has dedicated his life to finding, restoring, and re-releasing lost films of the great Film Noir era of the 1940s and ’50s. His...
The Soul of the Italian Shoe
In Venice, Italy, a city built for endless walking, a determined young woman named Daniela Ghezzo has mastered the rare art of simultaneously...
The Architecture of Trust
With only a quick glance at today’s overheated political climate—the balkanized geography between red and blue states, the bombastic former...
Women Who Embroider the Air
On a small island near Venice, the fine art of hand-sewn lace somehow remains alive. Our correspondent visits with the master craftswomen of...
A Black Entrepreneur Finds Her ‘Vegan Soul’ — in Idaho
When Mae Gaines moved from Los Angeles, CA, to Idaho, she expected her life would be different. What she didn’t anticipate was the response...
The New Water Alchemists
Animals, plants, soil, and air have long collaborated to regulate our climate by stimulating “the water cycle.” They have also helped control...
The Return of the Harmonica
In the 1970s, Hohner, the world’s largest harmonica manufacturer, changed its flagship model, and in the process its signature sound. A few...
The Norwegian Sweater Detective
In a postcard-perfect valley in southern Norway, Annemor Sundbø nurtures her life’s work: old garments, paintings, and other clues to the myths...
The World’s Greatest Goldbeater
Marino Menegazzo hammers gold leaf by hand into sheets 200 times thinner than a human hair. He works in the same studio where Titian, one of...
The VW Doctor is In
In a corrugated tin shed that somehow survived California’s massive fires in Sonoma Valley, Gary Freeman labors to keep old VW Beetles and...
The Rawhide Artist
Bill Black has poured his life into refining a simple piece of handmade horse gear called a hackamore. Although the device is rarely used...
The Secret to Vintage Jeans
On December 31, 2017, the doors closed on North Carolina’s White Oak plant—the first, and now last, big textile mill in the U.S. to make true,...
Real Film Strikes Back
Against all odds, and despite the best efforts of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, old-fashioned, analog, motion-picture film is suddenly making a...
Do the Most Interesting Musical Pipes Come from Ireland?
While Scotland is branded by its famous Highland bagpipes, Ireland has long made a very different kind that plays a much wider range of music....
The Toolbelt Masters
With gumption, insight, and brilliant use of social media, a few guys in Virginia built an operation that makes what could be the world’s finest...
Japan’s Gorgeous, Precarious Fishing Poles
Japanese master craftsmen can command up to $100,000 for turning bamboo into a fishing pole. Yet, this time-honored craft is at the brink of...
Mexico’s Master Guitar Makers
The now iconic white guitar made famous by the Disney film “Coco” was created in Paracho, a small Mexican town where almost every shop makes...
The Cigar Box Guitar Maker
When a promising rock musician tired of the road and the pressure, he gave up music and got a job at a hardware store. Then one day, he had a...
The Healing Power of “Bello”
On the Northeastern coast of Italy, an unusual drug treatment center uses craftsmanship — and the strength of community — to rehabilitate some of...
The Power of the Scribe
Spiritual faith has long been shaped by the lettering on a religion’s sacred texts. This is particularly the case with Judaism, so we visited...
Artisanal Homemade Bread Made Simple
Confined to our homes during the Covid-19 quarantine, many of us have realized this is an ideal time to start baking our own bread. The idea has...
The Human Cost of Recycled Cotton
Everyone in the fashion world wants to find a more sustainable, environmentally friendly way to make cotton clothes — or a benign (and comfy)...
The Bug Whisperer
Mark Sturges doesn’t advertise — clients have to find him by word of mouth, but find him they do. He’s become a master of an agricultural art as...
Straw Bale: The Ultra-Ecological House
As our environmental challenges mount — from devastating wildfires to hurricanes and floods — one solution, largely ignored thus far, may lie in...
The Bonsai Kid
A young Oregonian believes that he can create a uniquely American form of the Japanese bonsai tree. And he is literally betting the farm on the...
When Indigenous Women Win
In the mountains of Michoacán, Mexico, a band of determined indigenous women led the overthrow of a criminal cartel. Their victory revived the...
The Jewelry Archaeologist
Through years of painstaking, often combative detective work, Hugo Kohl rescued an era of early American jewelry manufacturing technology that...
How Far Can Beer Science Go?
Where else would you expect to find a band of techno-scientific, craft beer geeks, except on the industrial side of San Francisco, ground zero...
The Watchman of Lausanne
For more than six centuries, a lone figure—part guard, part human angel—has circled the bell tower every night in the Cathedral of Lausanne,...
The Secrets of an Italian Gelato Master
Gelato, it turns out, is a very different creature from ice cream. And there are reasons that the best gelato tastes so creamy yet somehow still...
The Art of the Joke
When you watch masterful stand-up comics perform, they seem just naturally hilarious. Don’t kid yourself. This is hard work—a craft like making...
Eco-fashion’s Animal Rights Delusion
In this exploration of the hidden stories behind materials such as wool and rayon, silk and polyester, and vegan leather, Alden Wicker—a frequent...
The Drought Fighter
Could a small, controversial farmer in Northern California have found the most effective way to grow food in a warming world? With gross income...